State of Grace

Dinner with Grace Jones to celebrate her fabulous first album for 20 years? As others have discovered, the icon to end them all can be a daunting prospect, but Miranda Sawyer still gets more than she bargains for...

I am the ink in the squid.' An interview with Grace Jones is studded with statements like this. At first, my response is, 'How do you mean?' But after half an hour of increasingly off-the-wall replies, I give up and go with the flow. After another hour, a bottle of wine, a couple of sambuca shots and some impromptu howling at the moon, when she mentions again that she is the ink in the squid, I find myself nodding my head and saying, 'Yes, Grace. You are ... '

We are in Julie's, a Notting Hill restaurant that is used to stars, but would rather not have them hanging around late into a Monday night. The waiter is getting crotchety. Our dinner was set for 8pm, but Grace was more than two hours late. I didn't mind - her manager Brendan and I had a lovely meal - especially because, when she arrived, she was contrite, in her own way. 'I'm sorry. I'm running for President!' she kept shouting; meaning, I assume, that she's really busy. She'd fallen asleep, having been up all last night working with controversial video director Chris Cunningham. A night owl by nature, for the OMM shoot with Perou, Grace rolled in five hours late, at 10.30pm, but then stayed until past five in the morning, wielding guns and at one point even being trussed in ropes and dangling from the ceiling. She loved it.

'It was like sky-diving, amaaaaazing, beautiful, the ropes were like a spinal chord,' she tells me, as we settle in a small room off the main restaurant. 'I will do it again, completely naked.'

Just a few minutes with Grace Jones and you begin to understand the notorious Russell Harty incident of 1981, where she whacked Harty live on TV for talking to another guest. She is uninhibitedly physical, with herself and others; as likely to chuck herself to the floor as to jump on your back. At several points during our chat, she kisses my hands, strokes my face. She does a pervy tongue waggle at the crotchety waiter, who is not impressed. 'Oh dear,' says naughty Grace. 'I don't mean to offend.' And she sprawls full length on the banquette, roaring with laughter.

What a hoot she is. Not at all as I expected. Not scary.

'No, I am not scary,' she agrees. 'But I can play it and I am very stubborn. If you ask me and I don't want to, I go, "No. No. No. No. No. No." You know, like in Sexy Beast ...' She means Ben Kingsley's terrifying gangster, Don Logan. I do know. Does she deliberately wee on the bathroom floor as well?

'Ahahahahhah! Maybe. I'm not going to tell.'

Grace Jones's scary reputation dates back to the early Eighties, when she and her then-boyfriend, French photographer Jean-Paul Goude, went all out with her striking looks. Goude's photographs transformed Grace from a human being into a masculine-feminine skyscraper with cropped hair and sharp shoulders, an angled edifice. Dominatrix film parts followed: Zula, in Conan the Destroyer, and a Bond villain, May Day, opposite Roger Moore in A View to a Kill. Grace's cartoon image was enhanced by her choice of boyfriends, post-Goude: blond, body-builder types such as Dolph Lundgren and Sven Ole-Thorson. The picture is complete: a superwoman, stronger than any man.

Still, that doesn't entirely explain the awe which she inspires. She is commonly called an icon - 'You know, I don't know what that means' - and, yes, partly that's down to her image, which subverted the mainstream fetishisation of black women. Partly, though, it's because of her friends. She was Andy Warhol's muse, had Keith Haring paint her body, Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe take her photograph. But also - and this is strangely overlooked - it's her music.

'Pull up to the Bumper', 'My Jamaican Guy', 'Nightclubbing', 'Slave to the Rhythm', 'The Apple Stretching' ... the list goes on. Brilliantly produced, utterly unique, her best tracks married Caribbean reggae and New York club rhythms with Grace's spooky vocals: half-sung, half-spoken; threatening, sensuous, intimate, distant. Roisin Murphy is a known worshipper and you can see and hear Grace's influence on the new crop of art poppers like Santogold. And unlike much of the synth-laden Eighties sounds that are enjoying a revival at the moment, Grace's songs still sound cool.

'That Eighties revival, it doesn't exist, actually,' sniffs Grace. 'There is some Eighties music that is just timeless. The melodies, the lyrics... I called it church. Church in club. You can shout and dance. The best of the Eighties was club church.'

It's interesting that she mentions the church, as, despite notions that she arrived from space, she was actually brought up in a very religious household. And her new record, Hurricane - her first release for 20 years - is the first that speaks directly of her family, on a couple of tracks: 'William's Blood' and 'I'm Crying (Mother's Tears)'.

But there are some years to pass before we get to Hurricane. Twenty, in fact: the time since she last released a record. Why so long? Well, her working relationship with Chris Blackwell broke down (he was the founder of Island Records and produced Warm Leatherette and Nightclubbing), though they remain friends. 'It was very personal but we both understood each other ... this doesn't work, it's a crying thing.' Two albums never saw the light of day; producers came and went. Then Island was bought by Universal, which kept releasing repackaged greatest hits, consigning her to the past.

So, she 'went underground'. She continued to act in films such as 1995's Cyber Bandits (me neither). She would pop up in Ibiza, in New York, in Vegas, playing gigs, corporate PAs. Some of these, reportedly, were more miss than hit. Not that she really cared. Ant Genn, who co-produced Hurricane, with Grace and Ivor Guest, compares her to Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett: 'They went in and out of fashion, but they just kept performing, kept plying their trade. Grace is like that. And when she gets it right, she's as good as Michael Jackson or Prince. She's that level of performer.'

As she proved at her show at Massive Attack's Meltdown this June. It was quite the hottest ticket this year: and Grace didn't disappoint, stalking the stage in a series of ludicrous Philip Treacy hats, throwing herself into the audience, growling and yowling, unleashing that voice while shaking her tush in naughty basque and thong.

She showcased some of her new tracks at that show: this new LP has given her focus after the wilderness years. Hurricane came about through Treacy introducing Grace to Ivor Guest, who sounds like a joke from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue but is actually a musician, purveyor of soundtracks and moody beats. Guest played her some of his material; she loved it and he became her producer, rescuing tracks that were written as long as 15 years ago. He also became her boyfriend. Go girl! Ivor is 39. And he's the Viscount Wimborne, a blue-blood directly related to Winston Churchill and Princess Di. How very Grace. Though, annoyingly, she doesn't want to talk about their relationship. 'Too personal,' she says, and gives a filthy laugh. 'Passionate friends, darling.'

Anyway, the result of their hook-up is Hurricane, which sees her collaborate with Tricky, Brian Eno, Wendy and Lisa, Sly and Robbie, as well as with her own mother and son. It's a good record, though Grace's manager, Brendan, tells me he had quite a time shopping it round to the majors. None were interested ('too scared'); the independent Wall of Sound was the only label that would give her a deal. Well, phooey: all the naysayers must be kicking themselves now. Grace is really having a moment. Everyone wants her. So Brendan is happy, though he's had some hairy times. She won't go on stage unless she's been paid, in full, in cash, up front.

'The record is the key,' says Grace. So, let's talk the record. I do try, but it's hard to get specific with her. 'William's Blood' is about family, yet when I ask her how many brothers and sisters she has, she says: 'Guess ... We were six. Then seven. Then eight.' This turns out to mean that her parents had six children - Grace is the third-born, first daughter - then, 10 years later, another one came along and, after that, they adopted a girl. Grace tells the truth, but not straightforwardly: she plays with words, repeating them, rolling them around her mouth like fine wine. Her voice keeps changing, too: she takes on my Mancunian accent, which is weird to hear ('the fooll mont-eh!' she screeches about stripping off) and often sounds like she's translating in her head, perhaps from French.

Anyhow, I bash on and we establish some certainties. Grace grew up in Spanish Town, Jamaica, with her grandparents: her mother and father were working in the USA. It was a strict childhood, dominated by the church. She went three times a week: 'force-feeding, darling'. Both sides of her family were religious: there are many bishops in her family, including her younger brother (Bishop Noel Jones, who preaches on American TV), her father and step-grandfather.

Grace inherited her theatricality from her father, the Reverend Robert Jones: 'The pulpit was his theatre.' The music comes from her mother's side:born Marjorie Williams, she has a lovely voice. You can hear her singing towards the end of 'William's Blood'; she also did backing vocals on 'My Jamaican Guy' but couldn't be acknowledged, for fear of upsetting the church elders. Marjorie's father was musical, too: he played with Nat King Cole. Grace remembers a newspaper photograph of him, only really shown as a threat, as the terrible thing she might become if she didn't watch out. Their church simply did not approve of anyone using their talent other than to glorify God.

So how did her family react when Grace went the wrong way, became a pop star? She gets quite upset when she talks about this: her eyes glisten, she thumps the table.

'I hated my dad, he was so strict. But now I love him, because they didn't make him bishop for a long time because of me. There was an article in Ebony magazine about me with a photograph of the family around the piano. My dad wasn't in it, but the fact that it was released in a magazine ... he was supposed to cut me off, like in the Bible it says, If your right arm offends, you cut it off. He said, "I don't care, I support my daughter". But it held him back.' Grace is cagey about her relatives: 'I don't talk about this. It's not just me, it's all my family looking at it.' Plus, she's making a documentary with Sophie Fiennes on this very topic and appears to be saving her most intimate confessions for that. To add to the confusion, she uses familial terms loosely: I had heard that her father had died, but this turns out to be her step-grandfather; she calls one brother, Christian, her twin, but tells me, 'I can't tell the truth about that one. Twin has more to do with the spiritual than the blood.'

It's clear, though, that her background is the making of her: 'It was blinded [she means blinkered]. Run like the horse. There was nothing else to see but the church. But that's what charged my imagination.' A shy child, with just one school-friend, she was good at sports, and enjoyed the drama of Jamaica: the storms, which brought floods - 'mud pies' - and lightning, which scared her. Bishop Noel has said in the past that Grace was beaten as a child, but: 'I don't remember bad things. They just go away.'

At 13, she joined her mum and dad in Syracuse, New York, a difficult time made worse by the fact that she and Christian were prevented from singing in church together because Christian was so clearly gay. Grace started planning her escape: she began acting, joining a theatre group in Philadelphia run by a teacher known to her parents. From there, she ran away with a motorcycle gang and eventually, in her late teens, gravitated to New York proper, looking for acting work and forging a successful modelling career.

She made it to the cover of Vogue, though she never took modelling seriously. 'Modelling was all in between things, just to pay the rent. But then I shaved my eyebrows, shaved my head and they didn't like that and I was, "OK, I'm out of here." I was a go-go dancer, too. I called myself Grace Mendoza, to fool my parents. When was that? I don't know. I don't remember dates.'

At one point, she lived in Paris, with Jerry Hall and Jessica Lange. 'We were very anti-male, when the men tried to come in we would just boot them out. We were horrible.' Paris is one of her spiritual homes: London another; also Venice, Jamaica and New York, where she has an apartment. Her son by Jean-Paul Goude, Paulo, lives in Paris now, as does his father. Grace would have liked to have another child: after they split up, she asked Goude if he would give her some sperm so she could artificially inseminate herself, but he refused. Paulo is also a musician: he has a band called Trybez and wrote a song, 'Sunset Sunrise', for Hurricane

Paulo is 28, born in 1979, just as Grace's career went stratospheric. How was that?

'I went jungle,' she says. 'I took him everywhere. Like elephants or lionesses. I didn't go on his time, he went on mine. You have a child that is three, four months, how are they going to dictate to you what to do? Also, it depends on the kid. Some kids you know by their character that they're all right.'

Grace laughs and gestures at Brendan, who's joined us, to give her one of his cigarettes. 'You can't smoke in here,' he says. 'Shut the door,' she demands. 'I'll smoke out the window.' The window actually gives out on to another part of the restaurant. Not that that is going to stop Grace. 'What are they going to do? Arrest me? Put me in jail?' The waiter comes in and gets even more crotchety, but Grace waves him away, declaring that it's not a cigarette, it's incense and could he fermez la porte when he leaves. She finishes off the bottle of red wine and orders a double sambuca. And things start going haywire.

Grace notices the full moon, up above. 'My moon is in Scorpio,' she declares. 'I'm feeling horny. Be careful.' Brendan decides that she's had enough of the interview. Grace pooh-poohs him and I refuse to stop: 'We haven't even talked about New York yet!' I howl, and Grace settles down again, though she keeps kissing my hand.

New York, apparently, was 'like church. Dancing. Music was the priest. It was absolutely church, celebration, dancing, punches were spiked.' And Warhol, Haring? 'Artists who you meet on the Yellow Brick Road ... ' She won't be pinned down further, though she does say that what she likes is to work with artists who know what they want. Her preferred medium, in the end, is performance: like an actress, she wants to be directed and she adores feeling the love of the audience. She has been asked to do a residency in Vegas, but she won't: she went to see Diana Ross perform there and was shocked to find that she had to do two performances a night. 'I asked her how she did it, and she said, "You just hold back on the first show." I said, "I can't do that. It's cheating the audience."'

Next, she tells me the story of another track - 'Love You to Life' - the true story of one of Grace's lovers who was in a coma for several weeks, and came round in front of her. 'When their eyes first open and you just magically happen to be there, there's a look in the eye that you'll never forget. Like a birth. Wooooow! It was amazing.' His first word was Grace.

After that, she makes Brendan and me stand up and howl at the full moon. Grace puts her arms around both of us, her head thrown back, leading the attack. She's like electricity, I think to myself: her chaos fuses with other people's energy and creates action, a spark. She announces, again, that she's the ink in the squid. And I agree with her.

It is half past midnight. The interview, if you can call it that, is over. There are no other customers in the restaurant. We stomp to the bar, where Grace gets out a big wodge of cash and offers to settle the bill, a shock in itself. She is the only pop star in my 20 years of interviewing who has ever done this.

I pay; she shoves a tenner at the barman and orders another double sambuca. 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' she says, and whacks it down. We chat about the music that's playing: the Stones, the Doors. Then she jumps.

'Turn away, go away,' she orders Brendan, who does, the little git, trotting outside for a cigarette. Grace takes my face in her hands and strokes it. She kisses me full on the lips, grabs my breast and goes in for the kill. 'I must have your number,' she purrs urgently.

I am so taken aback that I burst out laughing. Grace Jones is trying to get off with me! How brilliant is that? I extricate myself by getting her phone number - 'File it under Grrrr,' she orders - and then offer my arm to help her down the stairs. In case you hadn't guessed, Grace is very, very drunk.

Outside, Notting Hill is moon-lit, beautiful, serene. Not a soul stirs. Apart from Grace. Off she goes, haring down the road, arms outstretched, hands aflap, like a bat. Her face is turned up towards the sky.